Welcome, Annabelle Sarah. How was your Christmas?
25 December 2009 | At sea, destination Acapulco - Day 13 Christmas day
Joe
It is night, the moon is up, and our little boat yet floats, and motors across the sometime dangerous Gulf of Tehuantepec. Sixty knot gales - source: the Caribbean - blow through here and extend as far as five hundred miles out to sea. They kick up nasty waves. The advice is: "one foot on the beach, or stay way out - 500 miles or more". and we planned a track 500 miles out, but the winds and currents did not let us keep to it! Six days and nights on course, then the ITCZ - fickle blows, thunderstorms and calms - and north of the ITCZ , why, more light winds (on the nose) contrary currents and calms, so we are using all the diesel fuel we've got (plus fifty gallons in reserve) to get across the Gulf before the next Tehuantepeccer comes on. And we will close the coast, probably against light headwinds, such as we are getting now. Maybe two more days . Acapulco.
How was your Christmas? Ours started with a pod of dolphins playing with us at Bluebottle's bows, swooping and turning in pairs - I'll show you some photos (and video) as soon as I can get internet ashore. So wonderful! Then I pumped all 50 gallons of our deck-loaded fuel from the jerry jugs into the ship's tank ready for this last 300 miles. Adrienne got down in the galley, and made a beet root salad, potato salad, chickpea salad, devilled eggs, and there was tuna salad and our last bottle of beer, nicely chilled, a late lunch eaten in the cockpit under the bimini's shade, a shimmering sea, hot sun, a straight wake. Otto the Autopilot steered and the good ol' diesel kept on keeping on. Oh yes! I'm a granddad again - My son Sam and his darling wife Lucy now have a baby girl, Annabelle Sarah - this I learned today!
My father was a lay preacher. What's the difference between a lay preacher and a stand up comedian? One looks like this __ and the other looks like this |. Just funning. Daddy stood up to talk. But as somebody said; "Teacher, preacher, actor - all the same"
Apart from keeping you up to date on where we are (it seems a lot of people are following this voyage) I want to involve my reader in the experience, to ignite the imagination, to get to the heart of the matter and communicate it. So I want to attempt to put into words the unwordable, slippery stuff of living moments, the trail that one person's awareness leaves in the firmament. Krishnamurti said "the seer is the seen, the experiencer is the experience." - the writer is the written, I could say. So that's what you get. Enjoy.
The night, The eye and The Light.
A single star's watery reflection: its comet's tail The horizon is the night's waistline and stars that dip below the horizon, slip below the belt, as dark and light above as is below. I see boat's bow ripples creamy wash of light More like fireworkss! the spray of light sometimes Wavery reflections lightly dance on, and in, the water. The water, so much light in the sea like lightning seen afar off WHUMP! of light, now gone, is it a war that's going on down there? Light bubbles out from transom to wake like the milky way, that random, scatterd powderd glass of stars, and stars the size of marbles are popping up and moving aft Yea! headlights, flashbulbs, some of these photons are as big as dinner plates, some as big as bin lids! ! And those stars! My masthead light a skidding star a yellow planet, satellite, my winking GPS its LED wants to be in on the show tonight and if a ship's light were appear it would be as if a star detached from its constellation and came toward me
Lights in, on, above, below the sea, the sky, the eye - - as in the sunset today the unwordable colour, shockingly new - how can my retina hold all that?